


Color Studies

by panaceaa



Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 06:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17319326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panaceaa/pseuds/panaceaa
Summary: The first time a person sees their soulmate they see color for the first time, yet when they die the color fades away once more. Then there’s Kyle who has been switching between color and grayscale for as long as he can remember, and he can’t figure out why.





	Color Studies

When Kyle’s seven years old he goes to an art museum.

Not by his own choice, hardly did he ever get the liberty of choice so early in his childhood after all. But instead it was his mother’s decision, an addition to her repertoire of activities for her mother and son day trip out to the city.

It’s every bit as boring as he’d expected. Gray statues of people long dead, and paintings morphing shades of gray into more prominent grays. That’s all they were. Dull and lifeless works of art, as if the painters were _trying_ to make their art uninteresting.

It’s something Kyle never understood about the world, how everyone seemed to have such a fascination with gray tinted hues. Maybe it was an adult thing, but he sure didn’t understand it.

However, as he soon finds out, not every artist was the same.

For the moment he rounds the corner, he’s struck by the sudden sight of vibrancy and color. An entire section with nothing but pictures of the brightest and most appealing shades. Kyle finds his lips tilting into a smile at the sight despite his previous sour mood, and with slow steps he approaches the giant art piece dividing the two sections. He’d never seen something so grand in scale, spanning the length of the entire back wall, and he’s filled with a certain degree of awe at the sight of it.

It’s a painting that extends across the length of the room. A painted representation of the sky. Bright colors of sunset turning into a gray sky befitting a rainstorm. The mix of colors brightening the far right of the wall while the far left wall sits in lonely shades of gray. Intertwining paint strokes cross at the middle, mixing color and gray in a push and pull, a small war existing right at the point where a pair of stone statues stand in the middle of the room. One of a girl with long billowing hair and a windswept dress, her hand extended toward her counterpart: a man who was reaching out to her in much the same way.

Distantly, he’s aware of his mother coming to stand beside him.

“Ma, what does this mean?” He asks, voice as quiet as it's ever been, suddenly afraid that he might disturb some sort of strange peace here if he were to talk too loudly. She hums, as if trying to think of the right words, before she seems to find them and finally answers him.

“This is a representation of the way your world changes once you meet your soulmate.”

He tears his eyes away from the painting to look up at her.

“Soulmate?”

She gives him a smile before looking towards the exhibit herself, something strangely soft in her expression. “The one person in the world who is the one-hundred percent perfect one for you. Your entire vision will change the day you meet them, and then this painting will make a lot more sense. One side will look a lot different from the other.”

Kyle blinks, cocking his head slightly at the art piece.

“But it already looks different.”

“Yes, but it’ll be a lot more different then, bubbe. Trust me. It’s hard to explain, but one side will be a lot brighter and vivid than the other side.”

He shakes his head, unsatisfied with her explanation. Lifting a small hand, he points towards the right side of the wall.

“But that side’s already a lot brighter than that one,” he says, moving his hand to point at the opposite side before dropping it altogether. “More pretty, like the sky really is outside.”

For a moment, his mom just continues to stare at the painting. Then, slowly, she looks down at him with an unreadable expression.

“...That’s what the outside looks like to you?”

“Yeah?” He shrugs, not getting what the big deal was. “Well most of the time, sometimes everything’s gray and ugly,” he explains, scrunching up his nose at the thought.

“You mean when it changes from day to night?”

Kyle shakes his head. “No it can happen during the day too. Sometimes everything’s like that.” He points to the left side of the wall. “But sometimes things also look like that.” He points to the right side, colors that he doesn’t yet know the name for but that look as bright and vivid here was they would in the presence of the actual sun. “It always goes back and forth. Since forever.”

His mother for once seems to be at a loss for words.If anything she looks at him skeptically, as if she doesn’t quite believe him. It’s something he’s not exactly a stranger to, but it immediately causes frustration to rise to the surface. A silent determination to prove a point.

“Could you maybe describe them for me, bubbe?” She asks eventually, voice just a little too sweet. A tone that’s faintly familiar yet that he can’t quite place from where. “What colors do you see?”

And it’s an odd question. After all, they are colors that Kyle has no name for, never having learned them before, and it’s not exactly easy to describe a color without a name. So, he does the only thing he can do.

He uses what he knows.

Starting with the most abundant color in the middle, he points to it.

“That’s the color of Kenny’s parka.”

And then he points to the light shades lining the top of the wall.

“That’s the color of Kenny’s eyes.”

Then to the sun shining brightly in the middle.

“And that’s the color of Kenny’s hair.”

It doesn’t hit him then why his comparisons might be odd. He doesn’t understand why Kenny comes so quickly as a basis of color, or why his mother looks at him so strangely before she says something about calling his father and turns away.

All he knows, is that by the time they leave that museum the right wall is as gray as the left, and he no longer remembers how to describe what he saw.

***

At the age of eleven, the most significant thing Kyle knows about soulmates is that he’s the only one in his class who seems to have one.

He’d never been shy about anything in his life. If there was something he wanted to talk about, he was going to talk about it, and that included his ability to see color. It was just the way that he was. But just because he spoke about something regularly, it didn’t mean that people necessarily _listened_. Or even bothered to try to understand.

A part of him said he was used to it, another part reminded him it still hurt every time.

Some, more than others.

“I have to go to this color studies class after school for the next few days,” Kyle says to his friends one day during recess. It’s part complaint and part only factual. After all, he Stan, Cartman, and Kenny usually either took the bus or walked home together.

Of course, it sometimes seemed as if Eric Cartman’s sole job in life was to piss him off, and he took his job very seriously.

“Jesus christ, Kahl!” Cartman snaps, shooting a glare towards him. “Can you give it a fucking rest already?”

Kyle’s eyes narrow, posture instantly stiffening.

“ _What_?”

“This stupid color thing. ‘ _Oh I’m Kahl and I have a god-given butt-buddy, isn’t that great guys?_ ’” He rolls his eyes. “We all know you’re just doing this for attention or whatever, and it’s getting fucking old.”

“I’m _not_ doing it for attention, fatass.”

“Oh _please_ ,” he says with another roll of his eyes that’s somehow even more infuriating than the first. “Even Stan knows it. Right, Stan?”

Kyle shoots his best friend an accusatory glare, and Stan cringes.

“I mean I don’t know, dude,” he starts off slowly, throwing Cartman an annoyed look before his expression turns distinctly uncomfortable as he turns back to Kyle with an awkward shrug. “I asked my mom and she said that most people don’t meet their soulmates until they’re a lot older, and you can’t exactly turn it off...you know?”

Kyle did know. The only way a person was able to lose their color vision was if their soulmate died. But the fact that Kyle regularly lost it at all was information he had _only trusted_ to Stan, and hearing it thrown back at him in this way, however vague he might have kept it, was kind of like a slap in the face.

“You think I’m lying,” Kyle says as a fact, hurt breaking through his tone.

“I’m just saying that maybe you’re just seeing what you want to. Believe me, I get it. Like, I don’t see color yet even though I’m with Wendy so-”

“Whatever.”

And with that single word, Kyle turns and stalks away.

“Come on, dude!” Stan calls after him, but he doesn’t turn back around. Just keeps on walking.

He ends up at the bleachers. Some of the girls are higher up, talking and laughing about one thing or another, but he ignores them and takes a seat down at the bottom. A part of him wants to go back and yell and throw a fit, but he knows that’s exactly what Cartman would want and he really doesn’t even have the energy this time around.

Because it wasn’t just Cartman this time, it was _Stan_.

It was bad enough that even his own parents didn’t believe him half the time. There was no doctor who could say what was wrong with him and the internet offered no answers, which left them with a son who sometimes could see color, and other times could only distinguish between gray and grayer. It was an inconsistency they sometimes blamed on simple convenience, no matter how many times Kyle tried to defend himself.

But that’s just how his parents were. He would have least thought that his best friend would have his back on this.

His thoughts are interrupted by the soft sound of footsteps coming towards him, and he lifts his head, half expecting to see Stan, only to instead be greeted with the sight of Kenny. He blinks, a little surprised, he and Kenny had never been exceptionally close, at least not enough to warrant private words of comfort when the other was in a particularly bad mood. Still, his presence isn’t unwelcome, and Kenny wordlessly sits beside him on the bleachers. There are several beats of silence then, Kenny not outright saying anything, and Kyle can’t help but appreciate the quiet company. A quiet that’s decidedly broken by Kyle when he at last lets out a heavy sigh.

“Having a soulmate is fucking stupid,” he says aloud, tone several shades of bitter. “What’s so great about it anyway?”

Kenny gives a small shrug.

“I dunno,” he answers. “But don’t you think it’s kinda cool to know that there’s someone out there who’s meant for you?”

Kyle looks at him in surprise.

He honestly hadn’t really even been expecting Kenny to answer, his question having been more rhetorical. But there’s something bright and honest in Kenny’s expression, and even though the folds of his parka muffle his voice, there’s something about the way that he talks that gives meaning to every word. Makes it feel as if Kyle is just hearing the sentiment for the first time, despite the fact that he’d been telling himself that very same thing for years.

“Don’t let them get to you,” Kenny continues, when Kyle just continues to stare. “They’re only jealous. The world’s a lot more kickass when you can see it in color.”

Kyle blinks.

Much like before there’s a way in which he says the words that makes them carry so much more weight. And it’s with those few words that Kyle comes to a startling and world-altering realization.

How had he been so _blind_?

“You see color too.”

Kenny nods. Lips hidden, but the brightness of his eyes telling Kyle everything that he needs to know.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t think it mattered.”

“Of course it mattered! We could’ve…”

Yet Kyle finds himself trailing off, looking down at his lap with a frown because he really didn’t have an argument here. Kenny had no obligation to tell him anything, they were friends but they weren’t _best_ friends. Not like he and Stan were. He was just... _Kenny_. He’d always been a bit quiet. A bit secretive. And well, Kyle had never exactly done anything to try to fix that.

So then why did this bother him so much all of a sudden?

Kenny bumps his shoulder against his, and successfully jars him from his thoughts. Looking up from his lap, Kyle meets his eyes. “Sorry,” Kenny tells him, as if he had anything to apologize for.

For a moment Kyle fumbles for a response, still unsure as to what he was feeling. Finally he settles on the single thing that seems the most important.

“Be more honest with me from now on?”

And to his surprise, Kenny nods. Not a question to be found, just a silent tilt of his head and a sunny look that spoke volumes.

“And about that color studies class…” Kyle adds, a bit nervous for a reason he can’t really discern. “Did you also have to go to that?”

Kenny nods again.

“Good,” Kyle says, releasing a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “So, we can walk home together after?”

Kenny’s eyes instantly light up. A bright and vivid blue, clear as the sky above.

“Sure thing, dude.”

And Kyle can’t help but smile.

***

When Kyle’s fifteen his life is marked by what some might call a slight obsession with his soulmate. Or at least that’s how it’s said in theory.

In truth, if asked, Kyle would claim the true fixation was entirely in the pursuit of knowledge. Of solving the biggest puzzle of this life that had been tossing him between color and grayscale for as long as he could remember. If he’d even just had a soulmate, seen the world in color every day, he’d have an easier time accepting it. But it was this constant back and forth that was driving him insane, that was telling him he needed some kind of answer before he could stop to humor the possibility that there might be none.

Of course, what he doesn’t say is one additional thing that he keeps tucked close to his heart.

It’s a spark of something. Of want. Of hope.

A possibility that had kept him up many nights thinking, dreaming of what could be in reach, yet also might not be.

Blue eyes as bright as the sky. Hair golden like the sun. The constant presence of an orange parka in the corner of his vision, his own personal sunrise.

Maybe it was weird to think of one of his best friends as being beautiful, but it was something undeniable, something he couldn’t quite ignore. Kenny was bright. Vibrant. The world brightened whenever he laughed, and his smile never failed to give Kyle a warm fluttery feeling in his chest. He might have never really thought about what having a soulmate meant besides the switch in vision, but one day he’d looked at Kenny and thought _maybe_. And he hadn’t been able to get the thought out of his head since.

Of course, he already knew that Kenny saw in color, but getting a true confirmation would mean breaching the one topic that he never wanted to tell anyone. The topic that only his parents and Stan knew about. And the topic that said some part of his color sight was broken, stuck in a non-consistent back and forth that was every bit as unpredictable as it had been in his early childhood. Because if most of his classmates already thought that he’d been lying about seeing color, Cartman’s initial rumor never really having lost traction, then this would have been the final tipping point into unbelievability. Even his mom had difficulty believing him, as much as she tried to hide it.

Switching back and forth between color and grayscale just wasn’t something that happened, and it’s not like he could prove it exactly. Besides, he’d gotten far too used to people not believing him, even when he argued with facts and clear logic. So, why should he believe that anyone would believe him on nothing but faith?

Yet...Kenny was different. Kenny had _always_ been different.

If anyone was going to believe him on nothing but faith, it would be Kenny.

And then maybe, just maybe, Kenny would know _exactly_ what he was talking about.

_Maybe you’re the only one in the world meant for me._

It was almost too much to hope.

But it’s this possibility, this one small hope, that brings Kyle to Kenny’s doorstep one insubstantial Saturday morning.

It’s his mom who answers, taking one look at him and offering a smile and a gesture.

“Kenny’s innis’ room.”

A nod and an unspoken question.

_Is this the day that everything changes?_

One way or another, he’d at least finally get his answer. To put an end to his endless wishing, if that’s all it really was. A wish.

When he gets to Kenny’s room, he’s greeted by the sight of him laying across his bed while scribbling something in a notebook. He looks up as Kyle enters, and his lips instantly curve into his signature lopsided grin. Something twists in Kyle’s gut.

“Hey, Ky.” He shuts the notebook and sits up on his bed, “What’s up?”

It really was unfair how radiant Kenny McCormick could be without even trying. He’d stopped wearing his hood up for quite a few years now, and yet Kyle _still_ couldn’t get accustomed to seeing his unobstructed face. Eyes weren’t supposed to be that bright and blue, and blond hair wasn’t supposed to shine in golden hues under the sunlight creeping through the window. Add all that to an unpredictable personality that flowed to his own personal tempo, and it was safe to say that Kyle was doomed from the start.

And that’s why Kenny was the only one for him. Why he _had_ to be.

“I uh, I needed to ask you something?” Kyle finally manages, somehow making the statement come out as more of a question. Dammit.

“Yeah?” Kenny tilts his head at him, peering at him a little more closely. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”

Kyle shakes his head, although he knows the smile he offers in reply is shaky at best. “It’s nothing like that. Don’t worry.”

But if Kenny notices his uneasiness, he doesn’t mention it. Instead, he just gives an easy smile and pats the spot on the bed beside him. Taking a steadying breath, Kyle moves over to him and sits, careful not to sit too close even though it’s impossible for him to ignore Kenny’s warmth and presence right beside him. Not only that, but he also can’t quite ignore the logistics of the spot they were currently occupying, sitting side by side on Kenny’s bed, the door shut, and completely alone.

Kyle swallows.

He really needed to concentrate. Now was not the time for his lame fantasies.

“Kenny,” he begins, preparing to cut right to the chase before he loses his nerve. A deep breath. Breathe in, breathe out. “Does your color vision fade in and out? Like sometimes you see color and other times all you can see is gray?”

The effect is instantaneous.

Before he even finishes speaking, Kenny is already looking at him as if startled. Eyes wide, and jaw slack.

“You mean, sometimes you lose your ability to see color for days?” Kenny asks, words hurried in a way that Kyle had never heard from him before. He doesn’t know exactly what to make of his reaction, but he’s certainly not laughing and Kyle finds hope in that fact.

“Yeah, there’s even been a few times where it’s been weeks,” he answers, trying to keep his tone neutral. “But it could also only be for a few hours.”

“And then it just comes back, with no explanation?”

“Yeah,” Kyle says, unable to keep himself from matching a bit of Kenny’s sudden energy. This could be it. This could _really_ be it. “Does that happen to you too?”

Kenny shakes his head.

Kyle’s heart instantly drops.

“No, I always see in color,” Kenny tells him. “I have for as long as I can remember. Just like you have.”

But Kyle is hardly even listening.

Kenny’s vision wasn’t like his. It’s all he can focus on. He’d been wrong, caught up on a wish, on a hope that had always been too much to ask.

If Kenny didn’t share his weird broken vision, then that left far too many unanswered questions. A mystery unsolved. And there _had_ to be an answer, Kyle just...thought that Kenny might be the one who could solve it for him.

He wanted him to be. God, how he _wanted_.

Of course, in this very moment, had Kyle been a bit more present maybe he would have seen the sudden brightness of Kenny’s eyes.

The newborn hope.

The eagerness.

The expectation.

A look that suggested that everything he’d been too hesitant to even dare to dream was suddenly clear to him in bright black and white letters. Everything he could have ever wanted.

Instead, Kyle’s too distracted by a soul-crushing disappointment.

Kenny had a soulmate.

Kenny had a soulmate and it _wasn’t him_.

***

By the time Kyle’s seventeen, he knows two things for certain. The first is that he’s no closer to finding out who his soulmate is than he was when he was a stupid kid. The second is that his feelings for Kenny McCormick never really went away, not with as much as he might have tried to move past them.

It’s a constant ache in his chest. A persistent pull to want to be near him, one that makes him question if maybe he’d just been the joke of the universe all along. That maybe there was no one else who shared his problem, that he was just defective. Cursed or something.

And one warm spring night, it’s that very thought that rises to the forefront of his mind, as loud and as glaring as ever.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Walking home from Stan’s house with Kenny beside him, wondering how bad it would be if he were to take the hand that kept frustratingly brushing against his. Wondering if Kenny was trying to drive him insane, what with the way he’d just spent half the evening practically pressed against his side as the three of them sat on the couch playing video games. Or if Kenny was _trying_ to mess with him, if he’d somehow figured out this dumb pining crush he’d had on him for years now. But that wasn’t something Kenny would do, and Kenny had always been flirty. It was just how he was. He probably wasn’t even aware he was doing it.

Not in the way that Kyle always was.

“Hey,” Kenny says, knocking his shoulder against his and stirring him from his thoughts. Kyle can feel his warmth even through the fabric of their winter coats, and he wants to draw him in so badly it hurts. “Are you okay?”

 _No_.

“Yeah, why?”

“You’ve been acting weird,” he says, cocking his head. “You didn’t even get into a single argument tonight, I think Cartman got so bored he fucking left.”

Kyle blinks.

Had he really been that out of it?

“I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking,” he says carefully, aiming for nonchalance with a shrug. Yet in the next moment he blows out a breath of air and can’t help but hang his head a little. He needed to talk to someone before he combusted, and Kenny was the only one he could really go to with this stuff, not so platonic feelings aside. “Maybe I’m just a joke of the universe, you know? Like it’d at least be nice to know that there was someone in the world meant for me, and not just left with the probability that there really isn’t. That I’ll probably just die alone.”

Kenny gives him a knowing look. “The soulmate thing again?”

“It’s just so frustrating!” He groans, kicking at a snow pile with his shoe. “I’m good at solving shit, I always have been. Yet the one thing I’ve been trying to figure out since I was a kid, I just _can’t_. Maybe I should just give up.”

“Well, is that what you want to do?”

Caught a little off guard, he immediately turns to meet Kenny’s eyes, only to find that his expression is much more serious than usual. Normal nonchalance absent in a sudden display of pure intensity. Kyle would be lying if he said he wasn’t a bit taken aback by it.

“Huh?”

“Do you want to give up on trying to find them?” Kenny pushes. “You know, maybe do what you want to instead of letting something you can’t even control take over your life.”

Kyle stops walking, Kenny follows suit.

“You think that I should,” he states as a fact, not question. Kenny was unusually passionate about this for some reason, and he was honestly a little hurt by it, even if he didn’t really know why. “You have a soulmate, don’t you at least want to find them?”

Yet Kenny just _laughs_. “There’s a difference between wanting to find your soulmate and ignoring everything that’s right in front of you because you’re so fucking set on solving some damn puzzle,” he says with a shake of his head. “It’s not that complicated, Ky.”

“I’m not ignoring-”

But in one smooth motion Kenny suddenly places his hand over Kyle’s mouth, successfully cutting him off. Then he leans up, lips a breath away from Kyle’s own, his hand the only thing separating them as he whispers, “Come on, Kyle. You’re _smarter_ than this.”

A warm tingling shiver travels down Kyle’s spine, anticipation alighting his every nerve, only to feel a wave of disappointment when Kenny steps away from him again.

And as they stand there, staring at each other in the middle of the winter air and under the night sky, Kyle’s left completely speechless.

So, it’s Kenny who breaks the silence.

“Just answer one thing for me,” he says, tone gentle despite the fact that there’s still clearly frustration lining his posture. “Have you ever seen me in grayscale?”

Kyle’s lips part, then they close. He frowns.

“I…”

He trails off, brows furrowing as he tries to think.

Had he ever seen Kenny in grayscale? Kenny. Vibrant and bright Kenny. Kenny with eyes that were always the brightest blue, and who held a vibrancy unlike anyone he’d ever met. Kenny who...who made _everything brighter_.

Slowly the pieces click together.

His eyes widen, lifting his gaze to his childhood friend. His... _soulmate_.

“It’s really not that complicated, Ky,” Kenny repeats, voice softer.

“You _knew_.”

His tone isn’t accusatory, only stunned. A slightly breathless whisper that’s the only thing he can manage at the moment.

“Yeah,” Kenny says, tone just as quiet. “I have for a while.”

“But you said you saw color all the time. Yet if you’re...then why…?”

There were still so many questions, so many things he didn’t understand. He’d been _sure_ , or at least he thought he had been. How-

His thoughts are cut off by fingers wrapping gently around his hand.

“Don’t think so hard about it, Ky,” Kenny soothes, giving his hand a squeeze before releasing it as quickly as he had taken it. “There’s an explanation, and I swear I’ll tell you, just...not now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

There’s a certain degree of hurt that comes through his tone without his control, and Kenny immediately seems to pick up on it. He looks away and fiddles with the drawstrings of his hood, lifting the fabric just enough to cover a portion of his mouth.

“Because I don’t want you to be with me just because we’re supposed to be or something,” he tells him, voice slightly muffled, and shoulders lifting in a small shrug. “I like you, a lot, but that was before I even figured it out.”

Kyle takes a step towards him, reaching for his hand again. Kenny lets him take it, although he still doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Kenny if I had you, I _swear_ it would be nothing like that.”

At that, Kenny finally peeks up at him and offers a nervous smile, still partially hidden. “I want to believe you. But you’ve never seemed interested before, and you hardly even know me when it comes down to it.”

And for a moment Kyle’s not really sure how to respond. _Did_ he know Kenny? He thought he did, but he also thought he’d correctly ruled him out as his possible soulmate, and he’d failed miserably at that. But, as he stands there searching for words, the old art scene from the museum suddenly comes to mind. A memory he hadn’t really thought about for years, yet suddenly gains all new significance. The girl reaching after her counterpart as the world changed forever around them. Kenny couldn’t walk away, not now. He wouldn’t let that happen.

He takes another step forward, this one bringing them not even a foot away from each other. “Then _let_ me know you. Give me a chance to prove that this isn’t just a soulmate thing.”

Kenny hesitates.

“Kenny, please.”

And it’s that which finally does it. Walls crumbling as Kenny finally gives him that lopsided smile that he’d always loved.

“Kyle Broflovski, _begging_? For me? As if I could ever say no.”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, Kyle pulls him into his arms and hugs him close. Kenny laughs lightly in surprise before he buries his face into the place where Kyle’s neck meets his shoulder.

“Thank you,” Kyle says into his hair.

And although those two words don’t exactly make up for every vivid day Kenny had given him just by existing, or for giving color to his life even when Kyle and his overthinking tendencies probably deserved none of it.

It’s at the very least a start.

**Author's Note:**

> So I kind of always had a hidden weakness for soulmate au's and I finally got around to writing one! :D   
> As always, comments are super appreciated<3
> 
> And LWTIS painted the soulmate painting from the beginning of this fic, and it's beautiful ;;; So, plz do yourself a favor and check it out~  
> https://panacea-for-all-evil.tumblr.com/post/182016790806/lwtis-its-a-painting-that-extends-across-the


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